Improving the Integration of Epidemiological Data Into Human Health Risk Assessment: What Risk Assessors Told Us They Want

The practical contribution of epidemiology studies of chemical exposures and disease outcomes is to inform risk assessment decisions. But risk assessors are widely dissatisfied with the conduct of epidemiology in this area. There is a widespread feeling the epidemiology is neither done nor reported in a way that is informative to them. To help identify the points of dissatisfaction and possible areas for mutual learning, we conducted a survey of risk assessors, seeking their opinions of epidemiology research. We present a few quantitative measures and a thematic analysis of responses to open-ended questions. Many risk assessors (with some adamant exceptions) believe that epidemiology has great potential to contribute to risk assessment, but falls short in many ways. Respondents identified inexcusable omissions (e.g., failing to clearly define and report the exposure measurement) and straightforward design choices (e.g., failure to stratify by exposure level) that render epidemiology result basically useless to them. Respondents also brought up a wide collection of more complicated and subtle concerns that could lead to further improvement of useful results. We identify areas where mutually-educating interdisciplinary dialog seems particularly promising. Epidemiology research is expensive, and risk management decisions more so, therefore it is inexcusable to not try to make epidemiologic research more useful for informing decisions.